when you need some waking up!

Zen Living – The Hundredth Monkey and the Third Guy

This is how wonderfulness spreads. It starts with one person, who the rest see as loony. Perhaps another joins in to mock. A third gets it. And then there is the celebration of being.

Is there hope for humanity? Ken Keyes in the “Hundredth Monkey” details a hopeful phenomenon observed in Japanese monkeys. Monkeys love sweet potatoes. A young monkey had learned that a sweet potato tastes much better if she washed it in the stream before eating it. She taught this trick to a relative. Then a few more monkeys learned it. At some point, a limited number, but enough monkeys learned this trick, and it became cultural property. It even jumped its way to other monkey tribes across the sea.

There is hope here. It takes just a few conscious people to change the direction of humanity. And guess who it starts with?